


A poor maiden so

by CakeorDeath



Category: Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
Genre: Childbirth, F/M, Gen, Poverty, distinctly 1831 attitudes to life, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:14:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CakeorDeath/pseuds/CakeorDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is 1831, and Henry and Catherine are once again forced to deal with a world that is not so kind, or clear cut, than they are.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A poor maiden so

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tulina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tulina/gifts).



> Please see below notes for spoiler filled warnings.
> 
> A lot of the characters (even the nice ones!) have some distinctly 1831 attitudes to women and sex.

_Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top,  
When you grow old, your wages will stop,  
When you have spent the little you made  
First to the Poorhouse and then to the grave_

 

Sarah took a deep, shuddery breath. The panic, which had first frozen her stomach in a place just two inches higher than it ought to be seven months ago, become a full blown roar.

Oh, dear God. Not now. Please, not yet.

The cows shifted, confused at her pain. They backed away from her. If it had to be anywhere, she was glad it had been in a barn. This was where she felt more at home. And, after all, when a woman felt such like an animal, she should be surrounded by her kin. 

The pains were coming faster and faster, racing her towards the end. Even though she begged for temporary relief while she was gripped for an agonised minute, she also dreaded how much more … open she felt after each pain.

It couldn’t happen here. To her, to Sarah Brown. But her body was more determined than her mind. It made her spread her legs wide, and pull down her stockings. It made her push through all the fear and the pain.

When, at last, the thing was free from her, she felt relief. But then … oh. A sharp wail jolted her heart.

She looked down into the squashed, freakish face, staring with a desperate terror at this new dark world, only the light of a flickering candle to show them both the way. The baby, still connected to her, was dirtying her clothes but she could not care. She felt the warmth, her warmth as she freed herself and the baby, using a knife she had stolen from the kitchen, from the naval string.

The little hands waved wildly in the air, trying perhaps to fight their way back into the warm, damp place it had left. “Hush now, my babby.” The words felt strange in her mouth, like she was reciting from a story or poem, the words that The Mother Part would say. “Hush now, my Mary.”

Sarah’s body was stiffened by the cold, and about her legs was the disgusting detritus of two bodies going through immense strain. But she would have been happy, in that moment, to stay there for the rest of her life. 

 

Miss Mulligan was the sort of woman who, if you were to come across her in hell (a highly unlikely prospect) would apologise for the mess and ask if she could not get you a nice glass of water.

“It is excessively kind of you to come so far Mr Tilney, and on such a night,” she said, almost reprovingly. The night was not so very bad for late November: cold certainly, but only drizzling. 

“Now, Miss Mulligan, I am very happy to enjoy some of your very fine cakes. Now, I’d best head off, before I make too much of a nuisance of myself-” he smiled at her attempts to reassure him otherwise “-but Mrs Tilney said she might visit tomorrow, and then I believe you niece is coming next week.”

He managed to get within the next ten minutes, a new record; although the rain had now turned from grizzling to the full wail of a storm. Miss Susanna Mulligan, poor soul, had been brought up to be neat, clean and to have no regard whatsoever for her own wishes and desires. In a lifelong aim of being ‘no trouble’ she managed, in her old age, to cause ten times the trouble than any ordinarily demanding person might.

Tilney walked swiftly through the streets, ignoring his parishioners enjoying themselves in the packed public house when they should be relishing the more virtuous comforts of home. He wanted to be beside his wife, and children, and the fire.

He was focused on the ground, making sure he did not slip or step in too deep a puddle. The rain and the wind were too loud for him to hear footsteps muffled by the mud. So it was only when he heard a baby crying did he look up and see a forlorn looking figure bending herself against the rain.

She slipped and fell, holding up the child so that it would be protected. She lay there, in the mud, but when Tilney had hurried over and helped her up, she seemed to be capable of walking.

“Where are you going on such a night as this?”

“Nowhere.” She was in shock.

“Well then. I am the parson. You shall come with me.”

 

In the year of our Lord 1831, in late February, a young servant girl met a handsome gentleman. She was but the dairy maid, and while the kitchen girls were kind enough she did not know their shared jokes or gossip. She was stocky and lonely, she talked to the cows, and made the butter, and stared out of window at the rain-swept, dreary beauty.

The handsome gentleman was bored, a friend of the young Master up at the House. He came into the diary, to be away from the rain. People from the House sometimes came into the dairy; they enjoyed agriculture in a remote and picturesque way. But normally Mr Bullworth, the Steward, did the talking, while the young girl stood with her head bowed. The Mistress might ask her one question about whether she did enjoy her work, or know her prayers or some such. She knew enough to bob a curtsey and give the same answer to both questions: “Very much so, Madam, thank you”.

There was no Mr Bullworth, so the handsome gentleman had asked questions about the cows and the milking of her. And although she was shy of him, he seemed interested in her responses. He seemed to respect her knowledge.

She knew that for her own good she must not talk to boys, to those loud creatures that hung around the stables, but this man had not seemed like any sort of boy. And when he … took liberties, she knew that it was too late to say anything. She had already disgraced herself just being in the position. Being alone with a man.

Her early life had been a series of hap-hazard temporary mothers – until their duty had run out and she was sent to a grey building. There she learnt exactly what happens to sinful girls – and to their babies. 

But then came the dairy, and a warm bed shared with just one other girl, and enough food to fill her gaping stomach. And she had thrown it all away.

 

The girl, perhaps just fourteen, sat with the child in her arms. Her hair was sandy, her face pink, and her body the type which could easily disguise a growing child. She was ignoring Mr and Mrs Tilney in favour of her sleeping baby.

“Where is your home?” asked Mrs Tilney.

She said something inaudible. “You must not be afraid. Speak clearly.”

“I … I was a dairy maid up at Manderby. But no longer.”

Mr Tilney sighed. “The child?”

“Yes sir. When I did not come in for my supper they sent someone looking in dairy and found me and the child, newly born.”

“When was this?”

“Today. This evening, sir.

Mrs Tilney stared with fury at her tea cup. “They could have a least let the child stay the night.” Her husband put her restraining hand on her shoulder. She ignored it. “They threw you out with no coat, or decent shoes. That just goes to show.”

“What is your name, child?”

“Sarah, sir. Sarah Brown.”

“Sarah, my dear child, how did you find yourself in such a position?” Mr Tilney felt slightly foolish the moment the words were said. Everyone in this room was fully aware of how it had happened.

Sarah did not answer but carried on staring at the baby.

“You do understand, don’t you, that you have committed a great sin?”

“I do understand, sir. I am very sorry for it.” She stroked the baby’s hair. “But, if you please sir, my shame is not the child’s.” She looked up at him. That look. She was not one to be underestimated.

“Of course. Do you know you Bible? We are all sinners, and even the worst of us can be forgiven our sins.”

She said nothing to that. Only, “What will happen to Mary?”

Mr Tilney sighed. “You have no family that could take you in?”

Sarah shook her head with one brisk movement.

“You would not be able to receive outdoor relief from the parish. There … there is a workhouse-”

“I will not go to the workhouse. It would be kinder for you to drown me and the child like cats.” She spoke low, and calm, and with determination.

“Miss Brown, you must not speak so!”

“Because you do not like to hear the truth?”

Mrs Tilney interrupted both of them. “Come, it is late. For tonight at least you can both sleep here,” Mrs Tilney said, as though this young mother and child were a friend of George’s or Fred’s who had missed the last coach. “We shall discuss the matter in the morning, when we are all rested.” Mrs Tilney rang the bell, and Janey was directed to take the young woman and the infant to the side bedroom and make a large fire.

 

Catherine and Henry had ten children, and five servants, and lived in a small house. In thirty years of marriage they had become experts in shouting in whispers.

“She is a child! And she is not the first or last to sin in such a way.”

“Catherine, come now. You must admit that you are concerned about keeping such a person in the house, the children-”

“Do you think that I would permit anything that I believed would harm the children?”

“Well, no-”

“Then, Mr Tilney, I would ask that you do not use it against me, or that poor girl. It reflects poorly on you.”

“Catherine … Come now, we are tired. Let us not go to bed on quarrelling.”

“It was you who began!”

“No it wasn’t! I-” Deep breath. “We are both in agreement, really. The child cannot stay here for ever, certainly not where her shame is so well known.”

“The girl does not wish to go to the workhouse, and I believe that she has a great more experience of such places than either you or I.”

Mrs Tilney sighed. “I am sorry. I am tired. And she is very young. I know you shall make the right decision.”

Mr Tilney could think of no adequate response to that, and they went to bed with only a few more words.

 

Mr Tilney’s youngest child was now three years old, so his was temporarily bewildered when he heard the cry of a baby. The bewilderment at the sound turned to bewilderment at himself. What had he been thinking? And what was he to do?

“Catherine, are you awake?”

“No.”

“There is a baby crying.”

“This one isn’t mine.”

 

Washed, dressed and breakfasted, although no more certain of what course he should take, Mr Tilney went to see Sarah. The conversation did not go well.

“Child, listen to me …”

“I am not a child. In the workhouse they shall not treat me as a child – Mary will be taken away from me, and I will not be able to protect her. You think that you are wise sir, that you know better than me, because you are a man, because you are a sir, but, I have seen far more of the cruelty in this world than you!”

Unpleasant as it was to witness such uncouth histrionics, Tilney was struck by the fact that there was, at least in part, some truth to them.

He took refuge in pomposity. “If you will not mind you tongue I shall not be able to help you.”

Sarah said nothing, did nothing. Silent insolence.

Tilney stood up and walked to the window, performing glum calculations about the depth of the snow.

When he looked back again at Sarah, he could see that her shoulders were shaking. When she spoke her voice was thick. “Sir, please. I am very sorry.”

He could see how much of her pride it was costing her to beg for his forgiveness. But when one had children pride, fear, hunger and any sense of propriety must be put second to the life and happiness of the one you hold most dear.

He was the man, the ‘sir’. The one with the power.

“And I am very grateful for your kindness. Please sir, I must attend to the child.”

He left her, and buried himself in writing several necessary, but difficult letters.

 

Mr Tilney was interrupted in his study by the clattering of Maria, Belle and Charlotte just outside the door. “Isn’t she just the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world?”

“Why is her face all swished like that?”

“Can she walk yet?”

Mr Tilney opened the door to the study and surveyed four faces with varying degrees of guilt.

“Sir, Mr Tilney, the children … they heard the crying …”

“Oh it was all our fault, Papa,” said Belle cheerfully.

“I don’t doubt it. Come now, I am sure your mother needs you.”

“But can we play with the baby later?”

“We’ll see.” He watched his daughters race down the stairs, bickering about who had one, the beauty of babies, and a hundred other subjects.

“I am sorry. I did not mean for them to find me.”

“They are very determined. I hope they have not disturbed your rest. Or the child’s?”

“No sir, they are fine children.”

“I am going to Manderby.”

Sarah just nodded.

 

Maria needed, in an astonishing coincidence, to go deliver some blankets to a poor family just by Manderby, and walked along with her Papa. He had thought that she might get bored and go off home, as the walk was long and muddy, and the view nothing especially enjoyable in winter. But she stayed the course, and they agreed to meet in one hour’s time.

When he was shown into the lady of the house, Mrs Dalrymple, she was as usual everything that was gracious and charming. This made Mr Tilney’s somewhat awkward inquiry all the more difficult.

“I come today to speak – perhaps your housekeeper would be the best person – about the young woman …?”

“Oh, you mean? All that unpleasantness. How quickly new does travel. What you must think of us, Mr Tilney? I assure you that the rest of my servants are good, God-fearing people.”

“Of course. You must not trouble yourself on that score. And you can rely on me and Mrs Tilney to be the essence of discretion. May I ask, however, who was it who discovered her and the child?”

 

Mr Bullworth was very large man, looking entirely out of place in Mrs Dalrymple’s own morning room. He knew his own power and used it to great effect. Mr Tilney reminded himself that he, at least, had nothing to fear. 

“She was an odd one, sir, always away with the fairies. So I went to fetch her when she didn’t come in. Not that I am one for running errands, mind you, got lads for that. But I knew something was up.”

Mr Tilney swallowed the unsavoury doubt prompted by this excuse. “You found her, with the child born, and the naval string cut?”

“I did, yes, sir.”

“And then you…?”

“Showed her the door, so to speak.” 

Mrs Dalrymple broke in: “We are a Christian household, you see. We will not be found wanting in our duty of care for the moral welfare of those lesser than us.”

Mr Tilney knew that had he been in younger, rasher, braver man he might have remarked that Mrs Dalrymple, and her wretched husband, should look to their own moral welfare before anyone elses.

“Did you not give her time to gather her possessions?”

“She had nothing but what we gave her,” Mr Bullworth said, with an odd pride. “Workhouse girl.”

“Her wages?”

“Why should we give them to her, when she has deceived us, her master and mistress?”

“Where did you expect her to go?” Mr Tilney hoped that he would say that the girl had family in the vicinity.

Mr Bullworth smiled. “Well, sir, I must say that the girl knows very well where the workhouse is. We spend enough of our money on the children of the feckless, in my opinion anyway. She can go there or she can find her own living.”

Mr Tilney reminded himself that to lose his temper at such a man would do no good. He spoke not with the heat of his father, but in what he hoped was a calm and moderate tone of voice. “Sir, I must ask that you do not speak so cavalierly about the life and immortal soul of a child of fourteen years and an infant in my presence.”

“Of course you know your business, sir.”

“I am certain Mr Bullworth meant no offense,” said Mrs Dalrymple, intimating that she rather thought Mr Tilney had. Mr Tilney did not feel particularly desirous of correcting her.

“Well, I came to reassure you for any concerns that you might have for the child’s welfare, as she and Mary (her child) is residing in my house until a more permanent situation can be found. Good day to you both.”

 

“What will happen to her, if she goes to the workhouse?”

Mr Tilney ignored the question in favour of scolding her for eavesdropping, but Maria had a way of being silent that made it easy to talk.

“Workhouses are … there has been a lot written recently about their drain on the public purse, especially with the war finishing – all those widows and young men with suddenly no trade. So, there is an ever greater push to make them places where you would not go unless there was no other choice.”

“That is wicked! If one’s husband died and you had no way of making enough to feed your child … it is not your own fault. No one predict the future.”

“Well, I believe it is not the correct course. But you must understand that many people are concerned that if it we are too kind then people who do not deserve or need help will take liberties.”

“Yes, but Sarah and Mary need help.”

“Yes.” Something in that ‘yes’ made Maria look up at him sharply.

“My friend Anne? Well, she is the natural daughter of somebody or nobody. And yet she goes to a nice school. And this child does have a mother.”

Mr Tilney sighed. “This is one of those situations that is … complicated.”

Maria said nothing to that, but her father did not think she was convinced. And was it really complicated? Perhaps it was simply easier to say that it was complicated

Maria suddenly came out with: “I do know that you shall choose the best possible course.”

Damn her, Mr Tilney thought.

 

Mr Tilney was, like most men, in different time periods at once. To his wife he was forever to be associated with the humorous young man who was everything that was agreeable, handsome and exciting. Whatever unglamorous discoveries that thirty years of marriage had brought about, her own image of him ignored grey hairs and glasses, and the thousand small disappointments that a long life contained.

To himself, Tilney was but seventeen, foolish, idealistic, and constrained by his love, fear and distaste for his father. This man’s departure from this world fifteen years prior had not freed him from this constraint, although it had freed him from the obligation of hiding it from the cause.

But to his children he was an old man, who although constrained by a great ignorance of the way of the world, the justice deserved by ones’ children and the proper conduct of one so advanced in years, he was decent, reliable and always a force for good. Whatever Mr Tilney’s private feeling on such a role, he did feel obliged to live up to it in this instance.

The girl was not a saint, she was no receiver of immaculate conception. But Mr Tilney knew of no greater sin than to turn away the weak, the dispossessed. He was also a man of the world, and many men of the world had behaved in ways far more than the act of such an indiscretion of a somewhat innocent child.

 

“Sarah…” Mrs Tilney did not, now it was time to actually say it, know how to begin. “I have an acquaintance. A gentleman by the name of Bingley, and his wife. They live in Derbyshire, which is quite a way from here. But there are very good people. And they are in need of a wet-nurse, and then some person who knows about dairies.”

Sarah could not speak.

“And,” continued Mr Tilney, “there is a school, just for girls. For Mary to go to until she is fourteen years.”

Sarah stood up sharply, and went to the window. She several deep breaths, filling her lungs, trying to flood the growing emotion with mouthfuls of air.

“I think … I think I should- we should like that very much.”

**Author's Note:**

> Pregnancy  
> Sexual guilt and hypocrisy  
> Brief suggestion of sexual abuse  
> The death fifteen years previous of Old Mr Tilney


End file.
